


navigating by your light

by thesecretdetectivecollection



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Dex is a little lost, Gen, M/M, and Matt is a little threatening, and he's still looking for a true north, but Dex doesn't know where else to go really, seeking redemption and maybe subconsciously seeking punishment for the wrongs he's done, someone to keep him from going completely off the rails
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-12
Updated: 2018-12-12
Packaged: 2019-09-16 19:05:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16959774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesecretdetectivecollection/pseuds/thesecretdetectivecollection
Summary: Dex breaks his arm when Fisk throws him against the wall, but he doesn't break his spine. He lands in the hospital, but breaks out as soon as he can. But being unemployed, injured, and a felon isn't easy.He finds himself in the home of someone who has just as much right to shoot him dead as he does to offer him a drink.But Matt Murdock offers him a drink.





	navigating by your light

The sight of Julie’s body is jarring, and the world is spinning around him, heart pounding a thousand beats a minute until he thinks he won’t survive this.

 

He knows in a heartbeat who did this. He tries not to know, tries to make himself believe that Wilson cares for him, tries to remember Wilson’s kindness, how he’d held him, how he’d told him to scream when he needed to.

 

He needs to, now, and so he does. His mouth opens, and he pours out his oxygen and his pain into the frigid air of the freezer, and wishes he could rip his heart out of his chest. He’d thought of himself as heartless before, but it’s times like this, when the pain rules his world, that he knows he isn’t. Nobody could hurt like this without having a heart.

 

He looks at her face again—Julie’s beautiful face, her gorgeous red hair framing a face that’s gone blue, and chokes on a sob at the sight of it.

 

The pain doesn’t fade so much as the anger grows, a rising red tide that cares nothing for justice and everything for retribution.

 

Fisk did this. Fisk killed Julie. Whether it was his hands or not, it was his fault she was dead.

 

He can’t wait to make Fisk suffer the same way.

 

He wants to. Hell, he’s right there, his fucking beautiful wife is right there, and it would be so easy to just throw a knife at her with exact precision, ruin the perfection of her wedding dress with the red of blood.

 

But _he’s_ there. Deep down, Dex knows this mystery man is the real Daredevil. It’s not a hard jump, the way he fights, the way he wears a mask over the top of his face, but leaves his jaw out for whatever reason. He owes him, he supposes, for telling him the truth about Julie, about Fisk, for keeping him from committing to a life built on lies.

 

Dex hates him, too, for ruining everything, for destroying his fragile life yet again. Even if Fisk is cruel, at least he hadn’t known that, at least he hadn’t known that viciousness had already been turned on him. So few people had been kind to him, in this hard, heartless world. He hates Daredevil for taking away just one more of them. He’d been happier when he’d been blind to it all.

 

Daredevil fights beautifully. He doesn’t know how to stay down, gets up every single time, with blood on his strong, square jaw. Dex notes the ropes on his hands—muay thai ropes, he thinks, with a hint of something that he doesn’t want to admit is admiration.

 

They both hate Fisk, he thinks, almost laughing when Daredevil starts fighting with him. At this rate, they’ll kill each other and let him run free, and won’t that be just the fucking icing on the shit day Dex has had.

 

“Why won’t you just let me kill him?” he grunts, throwing something—a knife. Fisk should have known better than to leave knives out on his counter, but that was him, wasn’t it. Fucking arrogant bastard.

 

The Devil hides behind a column—though hiding probably isn’t the right word for it, since he’s out a half-second later punching Fisk’s lights out.

 

Dex appreciates that, but he can really take it from here. He doesn’t need any help crushing Fisk. It’s something he needs to do alone.

 

Dex distracts the Devil, and when he’s down, for just another heartbeat or two, Fisk picks Dex up and throws him against a wall. He puts out his arms reflexively, feels radius and ulna alike snap and liquid fire consume his right arm. But that’s better than snapping his spine and dying right this second. He knows he’s in for a violent end, but he couldn’t stand to die before he killed Wilson Fisk, when he was so fucking close to what he wants, to what he needs.

 

He lays on the ground and closes his eyes, pretending he’s dead, or unconscious, taking tiny, secret breaths that make his chest ache because he’s not getting anywhere near enough oxygen.

 

He’s useless now, with one arm out of commission. He cracks his eyes open, and Fisk is distracted. The Devil’s got him, and he’s smashing his face, over and over and over again.

 

Dex wants him to stop, wants to call out Leave some for me, Daredevil, but he can’t. He imagines what it would be like to be on the same side as Daredevil, for a few moments before he finally loses consciousness, just barely seeing the police officers entering the room, armed, with Fisk surrendering everything.

 

He wakes up in agony. Most of that agony is in his right arm—his dominant hand. He’s not useless with his left, but he’s not as good. The rest of the pain is in his chest, where there are thick bandages. He cracks his eyes open and sees an IV in his left arm, pumping him full of not nearly enough drugs to make the pain go away.

 

He drifts in and out of consciousness, and by the time he manages to stay awake for more than an hour at a time, they’re starting to talk about discharging him.

 

He needs to escape before that. He can’t make up for everything he’s done by sitting in prison for the rest of his days. He needs to hurt—he wants to hurt people, and if he hurts bad people, then he’s actually doing some good, isn’t he? He’s a little confused about it all, but he knows jail is not the right move.

 

He disconnects the IV first, figures out how to silence the alarms on the heart monitor, and then he’s up on his feet and trying not to pass out. He takes a deep breath, waiting for his heart to adjust to the fact that he’s upright for the first time in awhile, and then he takes a few practice steps.

 

That’s enough. He runs. Well, staggers, more like.

 

There’s a lot of pain, more with every step, and he considers the fact that maybe the IV had been making it easier after all.

 

The first step is going down the hall and stealing some scrubs—he can’t exactly walk around incognito in the Daredevil costume, after all. Plus, now that it’s out who he is, what he’s done, the costume won’t earn him any of the cautious acceptance that he had when he’d first donned it. There’s nothing else in his hospital room, so it has to be scrubs.

 

He doesn’t bother going home, though he’d like to. He imagines grabbing some of his clothes. He’d need some of his guns, too, just in case. He’s seized with a moment of remorse, wishing he hadn’t burned the tapes. He’d do anything to hear Dr. Mercer’s voice again, telling him he wasn’t broken.

 

Then again, he’s listened to them so much he’s got them all memorized. There isn’t the same comfort as when he hears her voice, but he knows what she said.

 

_Your internal compass isn’t broken, Dex. It just works better with a North Star to guide you._

 

Now that Julie’s gone, what is he going to do? The brightest North Star he’d ever had, after Dr. Mercer, and she’s gone.

 

He walks, to the nearest subway station, and keeps his head down, avoiding eye contact with everyone else. He rides for awhile, until he’s far from the hospital and far from his apartment.

 

He gets out at a random stop in Hell’s Kitchen, blinking at the sunlight after the fluorescent lights of the subway.

 

He finds a decent park bench and sits for awhile, wondering where he should go.

 

He knows there are probably apartments that are empty. Somewhere, deep in his mind, he knows that he could take an apartment that wasn’t empty, take it with blood and anguish and settle down in a home built for someone else.

 

But no. Dr. Mercer wouldn’t approve of him doing that. He makes himself think of the fact that if he killed someone, their family would hurt, and their coworkers, and their friends.

 

It leads him to wonder who would hurt if he died, if anyone would even care. He wonders if perhaps, there are people who would rejoice at his death. Another monster gone from the world.

 

He wonders if there’s anything he could do, to make it so that when he dies, someone aches for missing him. Or at least doesn’t laugh or smile at the fact that he’s gone.

 

He knows he can’t stay forever, though. The air has a nip to it, and he needs to get inside somewhere. He needs warmth, shelter, food, clothes.

 

Hell, he needs to get back to his apartment.

 

He grits his teeth. He can manage. If it’s guarded, he’ll take the guards out. It would be easiest to take them out for good, of course, Dex is fully aware that he doesn’t need a gun to be lethal. But he can’t kill again. Not until he knows the targets deserve it. He doesn’t want to do anything that can’t be undone.

 

Not until he has a True North again. And a good one, this time. He’d been fooled by Fisk, fooled by the novel feeling of being wanted, of feeling loved.

 

Never again.

 

By the time he snaps out of that line of thought, it’s dark outside. His stomach is grumbling, and as he stands up, his muscles stiff and sore, and his arm flares with a new wave of pain.

 

He makes his way back to his apartment, sees the guards posted at the entrance, and promptly leaves, approaching the building from the fire escape. It would be almost unimaginably foolish to leave the place unguarded, and whatever adjective might be used to describe the NYPD, foolish isn’t it.

 

Tired, though, is. Overworked. Understaffed. And guard duty isn’t particularly stimulating, which is why Dex is grateful that the lone cop guarding the fire escape is fast asleep with bags under his eyes and headphones in his ears.

 

He wills all his weight upwards, tries not to make much sound as he gets inside and grabs a duffel bag, filling it up with clothes and his emergency cash. He goes to grab a gun, too, but they’re all gone, and he knows they’re locked up in some sort of evidence locker in the precinct police office.

 

He doesn’t push his luck too far, and when he leaves, he climbs up the fire escape instead of down, and takes the elevator. He walks out the front door looking for all the world like an innocent civilian.

 

Well, maybe the bruises and the guarded way he holds his innocent arm hurt the innocent part of that picture, but it doesn’t matter. He has enough to get to a library and look for vacant apartments. He isn’t planning on renting so much as he is squatting, at least for as long as he can. If nobody’s using the space, there’s no reason he shouldn’t use it, as far as he can tell. Not even a saint would deny him that, right?

 

He finds one, a fifth floor walk up that has a fire escape and a weak window lock. That’s all he needs, really. He doesn’t have water, that’s true, or power, really. No heat. Plus there’s probably a landlord or super or real estate agent that’ll be coming through sometime in the next few days…

 

Dex sighs and climbs back out the window and down the fire escape, walking with his head held low until he sees a sign that advertises a room for rent. Just a room, just a roof over his head, with access to a bathroom and a kitchen, kept at a temperature that’s just about comfortable, though when winter rolls around, he suspects he might have to start wearing more sweaters.

 

He knocks on the door and an elderly woman lets him in. He gets the room—after that first two months rent are paid, his new landlady mysteriously forgets the need for a background check and formal lease. Dex isn’t sure if that’s because she doesn’t care now that she has the money, or if she’s genuinely just old and starting a slow decline. He doesn’t care much, though. He just lays in the bed, fully dressed, and falls asleep until he shifts a little. The pain lancing through his arm is electric, and it’s only luck that his first instinct isn’t to cry out so much as it is to suppress the groan of agony that wants to come out.

 

He’s never been on the run before, he reflects miserably, arm covered with various packets of frozen vegetables—there wasn’t any ice in the freezer, and though he had the foresight to steal some drugs before his escape from the hospital, he hadn’t exactly had the opportunity to do so.

 

He sighs. He knows what retribution looks like, knows that it used to wear a red suit and now it wears muay thai ropes.

 

He knows who it is, too, knows Karen Page, knows Foggy Nelson, knows even the name of the Devil himself.

 

Matt Murdock. He was there on the night the FBI had searched Murdock’s apartment, and he knows the address still. It’s a long shot, and the guy’s probably moved, but he needs medical care, or at least some goddamn drugs to numb the pain while his bones knit back together, probably permanently misaligned.

 

He goes over there the next day and stakes the place out from the rooftop next door. There’s not much to it, really. Murdock comes home alone every night. Sometimes he drinks a beer alone on the sofa, sometimes he doesn’t. On weekends, he works out, doing pushups in his living room. Shirtless, of course, because who’s there to see?

 

Dex. Dex sees. He sees everything.

 

After two days of staking the place out, he can’t wait anymore. The pain is too much, and he’s starting to feel a little feverish. It’s not enough for a proper stakeout, and if he was still with the bureau, he’d try for longer, but that’s not an option. So he

 

Breaking into the apartment is easy, and Dex doesn’t know whether it’s humility that’s responsible for the abysmal security, or arrogance. Is it just sweet, blind little Matt Murdock, assuming that nobody’s going to want to break into his apartment because he has no fancy paintings, no expensive jewelry, and not much of anything at all, for that matter? Or is it Daredevil, who doesn’t give a fuck if someone tries to break in, and almost wants it, so he can distribute justice in the name of self-defense?

 

He sits on Matt’s sofa for all of three seconds before he can’t stand it anymore. His back is to the door, and even though he’s got a good line of sight to the window, his body is shifting into panic mode. Eventually, he just settles for leaning against the wall, next to the window. He’s careful to be far enough away from it that he can’t be reached if someone comes in all of a sudden, but close enough that he can get out, if he needs to.

 

Dex hopes he doesn’t need to. He can already feel the throbbing of his arm, and imagining some sort of duck and roll would feel like liquid fire engulfing the lump of flesh that was once his strong, capable arm.

 

It’s dark, by the time Murdock gets back to his home, only the ghostly light of the billboard next door left to illuminate the sparsely decorated apartment.

 

“I had wondered where you went afterwards, Dex.” His voice is too even, as if he’s forcing himself to be calm, as if he’s afraid of spooking a feral animal. It’s lighter, too, softer without the gravel he adds to it when he’s speaking as Daredevil. “Heard you broke out of the hospital.”

 

“Yeah,” Dex agrees, “I didn’t think prison was the right way to make up for my—for the things that I did wrong.”

 

Matt hums noncommittally and takes three careful steps closer, a sign that the conversation is going well, but not so foolish as to trust a mass murdering psychopath.

 

That’s what the newspapers say about him. Psycho killer murders priest! He sees the headline every time his eyelids dare to close.

 

The words make his stomach turn. What’s worse is that they’re not wrong. Not really. He’d known ever since he’d heard the word psychopath that he was a monster in a little boy’s body. But Dr. Mercer had led him to believe that he wasn’t broken, that he could still be good, with some help.

 

Too bad he doesn’t really know what good is, anymore. If he ever really did.

 

“Dex?”

 

When Dex looks up, Murdock is one step closer to him, hand outstretched. He still looks cautious, and he’s still far enough away that Dex can’t—can’t what, exactly? Dex is a great shot, distance wouldn’t matter for him if he had a gun.

 

Or a knife. Or a pen.

 

Or scissors, for that matter. His eyes shift to Murdock’s shoulder, where he knows the metal blades of the scissor embedded themselves into the muscle.

 

He wonders about the healing on that sort of injury—if it’s ever possible to get back to full strength.

 

Murdock is still there, still looking at him, as if he’s a skittish, delicate thing.

 

“I’m not going to bite, Murdock,” he mutters.

 

“Well, that’s one piece of good news,” Murdock says dryly, “so what exactly brings you to my apartment, then, if it’s not official biting business?”

 

Dex shrugs, but the movement jostles his arm, and he lets out a sharp, pained grunt.

 

“Ah.” Murdock’s—Dex feels like Murdock’s looking at him now, which makes no sense, because his eyes are still as murky and unfocused as before. Something about him, though—it’s like when an animal hears a sound and its ears move to catch it better.

 

“Let me see,” Murdock isn’t asking, and Dex is too far gone now to do anything but hold out his damaged limb.

 

“Both the radius and the ulna, fractured. I didn’t come to ask you to kiss it better, I just—I thought you might have some painkillers. Something stronger than over the counter aspirin.”

 

“You live in fucking Hell’s Kitchen, and when you need drugs, you come to me?” Murdock’s voice is laden with disbelief, and his eyebrows shoot up, valiantly trying to join his hairline, “I’m a vigilante, not a drug dealer, Poindexter, fucking hell!”

 

“Yeah, well, I’m not on great terms with the criminal underworld, since I killed one of their leaders and scared the shit out of the rest. Besides, you get hurt, I didn’t think you’d try to kill me… and I don’t have much money. Probably not enough for anywhere near what I need.”

 

“I’m blind,” Murdock says slowly, as if Dex is a fucking idiot and doesn’t understand that.

 

“No shit.”

 

“No, Dex, I’m blind. You’ve been in my apartment for who knows how long—if all you wanted was drugs, why didn’t you just go to the bathroom and go through the medicine cabinet? Not that that would help, because I don’t have any, but there was no need for you to stay and wait for me and ask when you could have just taken what you needed on your own.”

 

Dex thinks it over, and flushes, feeling incredibly stupid. “I’m going to pretend that was just the pain going to my head, and whatever drugs they gave me before, and being broke and living with an old lady who probably forgot she rented me the room and gave it to someone else while I was here, and not the fact that I’m a complete fucking _idiot_ —“

 

“You’re not an idiot,” Murdock says simply. It’s a statement of fact, more than anything else. “You’re here because you want to be here. If you’d wanted to, you could’ve killed me the minute I walked in. You didn’t. Sit on the sofa, I’ll call someone to patch you up.”

 

Dex settles back on the sofa—it no longer makes his skin crawl quite as badly to have his back to the door, now that the biggest threat in Hell’s Kitchen is standing in front of him.

 

He almost can’t believe his eyes, but Daredevil is taking off his tie and unbuttoning the top few buttons of his shirt, phone up to his ear. “Hi. Yeah, it’s me. I mean, yeah, it’s me calling, it’s not me that needs patching up this time. I—look, can you bring me something for a broken arm? Bandages, painkillers, a splint or a cast or something? I’m not going to ask you to patch him up, I know you don’t want to do that anymore—“

 

Dex notes the clear absence of names in the phone call, and he notes that Murdock had been careful about not handing out any information about this person. He doesn’t even know if it’s a man or a woman or a fucking alien. This person, this criminal doctor or whoever it is, is important to him.

 

Dex knows that, and knows it’s important information. He just doesn’t know what to do with it. If he hurts the doctor, Daredevil won’t kill him, but he’ll definitely leave with more broken bones that he walked in with. If he tries to use the doctor against the Devil… well, he doesn’t even know what he wants to get from a fucking blind attorney. He sighs, wanting to close his eyes and yet unable to. His body is unable to cast aside instincts it’s honed over years and years, and he can’t close his eyes for longer than it takes to blink, not unless he’s with a person he trusts implicitly.

 

He hasn’t voluntarily slept in front of anyone in years, not since he’d drifted off in a session with Dr. Mercer once. They’d been talking and she’s paused to write a note, and he’d been in high school, exhausted beyond all comprehension after pulling two all nighters in a row, and he’d passed out.

 

He sits there and listens to the quiet rustle of clothing as Murdock changes out of his suit into sweatpants and a Columbia sweatshirt. He comes back and walks over to the kitchen. Dex watches, because the kitchen is behind his back and he has to keep his eyes on the most immediate threat, or he’ll die sooner than he thinks.

 

Murdock doesn’t remark on it—though perhaps that’s because he doesn’t see it, doesn’t know it? Then again, he’d known who was in his apartment without Dex saying a single word to him.

 

“How did you know it was me?”

 

“You’ve still got that new suit smell to you,” he says wryly, “he had him make you a new suit, didn’t he? Yeah, it takes a little while for the smell to go away, and you’ve practically been living in the damn thing lately. You never forget that new suit smell, though. You’re the only person in the world who knows it, other than me.” There’s something to the expression on his face, something that Dr. Mercer and Julie might have been able to understand, but Dex can’t quite do it.

 

He walks back over and holds out a glass of dark liquid. “Whiskey,” he offers, “if you’re afraid it’s poisoned, I’ll drink it.”

 

Dex takes the glass, glaring though he actually had thought about the poison. He just figures that poison might be better than taking a sip of something from a glass that’s just touched somebody else’s lips. The bacteria _alone_ —

 

“When is this mystery man coming over to fix me up, then?” The gendered assumption is deliberate. If he’s wrong, Murdock will want to call him on it, and if he’s not, he knows it’s a man coming over to bandage his arm. Either way, he gains a little bit of information.

 

“Not to fix you up. I’m getting the materials and the meds, then _I’ll_ fix you up.”

 

Well, fuck if that isn’t the least informative answer possible. Then again, Dex ought to know better than to try to get information out of a lawyer. It would be easier by far to get blood from a stone.

 

They sit in silence—well, Dex sits, Murdock stands, in nearly the same spot Dex had chosen to wait for him in, and don’t move until there’s a knock at the door. Murdock moves then, pushes away from the wall and walks fluidly to the door, closing it behind him so Dex can’t see the visitor, can’t hear the conversation.

 

Still starved of information, Murdock’s skill is quickly becoming less impressive and more annoying.

 

He walks back in a few moments later, followed by a dark skinned woman wearing scrubs and a tired expression.

 

“This is Claire,” Murdock says quietly, “you speak to her with respect, and if you so much as lay a hand on her, the broken arm will be the least of your problems.”

 

The woman—Claire, rolls her eyes. “Alright, Matt, no need to be the knight in red body armor anymore, just let me see that arm.”

 

“Uh, I’m Dex,” Dex volunteers stupidly. She kneels in front of him on the floor, taking his arm in her hands to check the damage. _You’re really pretty,_ he thinks, looking at her dark curls, the brown skin of her hands probing to feel where the breaks are and how she wants to bandage it.

 

“I know who you are. You’re the guy who stabbed Matt with scissors.” She looks up at Murdock, fixing him with a hard look. Dex wonders how effective that sort of thing is with a blind man, anyway. “And Matt, I get calling me for your vigilante friends, honestly, I do, and I don’t even mind doing it. But I didn’t exactly sign up to fix the bad guys, too. You have a good heart, I know that. But where does it end? Not everyone can be saved.”

 

Matt looks almost sheepish, like a kid caught bringing home an injured puppy to take care of. Not that Dex was anything like a puppy. Maybe a kid bringing home the dog that bit him. Yeah, that’s more appropriate.

 

She sets a bottle of painkillers on the table. “I can’t get any more of these, Matt. If this stuff goes missing, people start looking for it, and I can’t be the one responsible.” She sets down a piece of paper with a name and a phone number. “This is—well, let’s call him the ER’s version of a frequent flier. He’ll have more, if you need it. And if he doesn’t have it himself, he’ll be able to get it for you. It’s not going to be cheap, though, and the stuff is addictive. You could go from—“ Her voice trails off, as if she’s not sure what to call Dex, exactly.

 

“From you to a drug addict,” Matt fills in, “doesn’t take much, Claire, I get it. I’ll monitor the situation.”

 

She nods sharply and groans as she rises to her feet.

 

“Claire, thank you,” Murdock says fervently, “I’m so sorry, I know I haven’t called you in a long while—I just can’t keep putting you through this. Not when I know how it’s going to end, some day.”

 

She smiles, the look full of regret and so soft it makes Dex look away, as if he’s intruding on something private. “Not everything can be healed, Matt. You know that.”

 

Murdock nods, averting his eyes, and she leans forward, kissing his cheek. “Please take care of yourself. And be careful with him. You know what he’s capable of.”

 

“Good night, Claire. Give _our mutual friends_ my best the next time you see them, okay?”

 

She murmurs a quiet assent, and then she’s walking away and Murdock’s lingering in the door, listening to her leave. He closes the door at some point, and comes back in.

 

“I don’t kill, Dex,” he says meaningfully, “but if you lay a hand on any of my people, and Claire is on that list, you’ll _wish_ you were dead.”

 

“Understood.” Dex stands up, hating the fact that his body always feels off-balance without the use of one of his arms. “I’ll go now, get out of your hair.”

 

Matt nods, picking up the glass of whiskey, still half-full, and downs the rest of it in two gulps. “This doesn’t change anything, you know that, right? I want to believe you can do better, find someone who can guide you to do the right thing instead of manipulating you to do the wrong thing. But if you and the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen meet out there, and you’re doing the wrong thing again, I won’t pull my punches.”

 

“Understood,” Dex says again. It hurts a little bit, that he’s being treated like an animal that could bite at any time. It hurts, to think that Murdock thinks he might hurt his loved ones.

 

It hurts a lot that his arm is broken, though, so he pockets the bottle of pills and the piece of paper with the contact information of the dealer.

 

He goes back to the window, glances at the garish billboard, and lifts the sash.

 

“Wait,” Murdock says, as if he hates himself for the word, “you can stay here tonight. If you want to.”

 

Dex doesn’t quite know why he does it, but he lowers the sash and goes back to the sofa.

 

“You can take the bed,” Murdock offers, though he doesn’t protest when Dex toes off his shoes and carefully, _carefully_ lays himself down on the sofa.

 

“I’m good here.”

 

Murdock nods and heads into his bedroom. “Serves me right if I wake up dead,” he mutters to himself, and Dex almost smiles, for the first time in far too long.

 


End file.
